3MRC/CSO Social & Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

Correspondence to Dr Graham Moore; MooreG{at}cf.ac.uk

Received 3 November 2014

Accepted 13 February 2015

Published 15 April 2015

Abstract

Objectives To examine the prevalence of electronic(e)-cigarette use, prevalence of e-cigarette and tobacco use by age, and associations
of e-cigarette use with sociodemographic characteristics, tobacco and cannabis use among young people in Wales.

Design Data from two nationally-representative cross-sectional surveys undertaken in 2013–2014. Logistic regression analyses, adjusting
for school-level clustering, examined sociodemographic characteristics of e-cigarette use, and associations between e-cigarette
use and smoking.

Results Primary-school children were more likely to have used e-cigarettes (5.8%) than tobacco (1.6%). Ever use of e-cigarettes remained
more prevalent than ever use of tobacco until age 14–15. Overall, 12.3% of secondary-school students (aged 11–16) reported
ever using e-cigarettes, with no differences according to gender, ethnicity or family affluence. The percentage of ‘never
smokers’ reporting having used e-cigarettes was 5.3% at age 10–11 to 8.0% at age 15–16. The proportion of children who had
ever used an e-cigarette and reported currently smoking increased from 6.9% among 10–11 year olds to 39.2% in 15–16 year olds.
Only 1.5% (n=125) of 11–16 year-olds, including 0.3% of never smokers, reported regular e-cigarette use (use at least once
a month). Current weekly smokers were 100 times more likely than non-smokers to report regular e-cigarette use (relative risk
ratio (RRR=121.15; 95% CI 57.56 to 254.97). Regular e-cigarette use was also more likely among those who had smoked cannabis
(RRR 53.03; 95% CI 38.87 to 80.65).

Conclusions Many young people (including never-smokers) have tried e-cigarettes. However, regular use is less common, and is associated
with tobacco cigarette use. Longitudinal research is needed to understand age-related trajectories of e-cigarette use and
to understand the temporal nature of relationships between e-cigarette and tobacco use.

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license,
which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work
is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/